Rep. Brendan Crighton elected to Senate, filling McGee vacancy

By William J. Dowd / wdowd@wickedlocal.com

Tuesday

Mar 6, 2018 at 10:09 PMMar 7, 2018 at 12:33 AM

State Rep. Brendan Crighton, Lynn-D, will serve as Massachusetts’ Third Essex District senator, voters decided in the Tuesday, March 6 Special State Election to fill the Senate seat that Thomas McGee formerly occupied.

Crighton will now represent a senatorial district that comprises Lynn, Lynnfield, Marblehead, Nahant, Saugus and Swampscott. The Senate seat’s vacancy was created in early January, when McGee resigned to become Lynn’s mayor.

“Thank you to the voters - I’m incredibly honored,” Crighton told the Swampscott Reporter Tuesday. “Thank you to my volunteers who’ve came out to help the campaign - despite the difficult weather that we’ve been having over the past couple months.”

He added, “It’s the end of this campaign – and now I’m ready to get to working on issues most important to the Third Essex [Senatorial] District.”

Tuesday’s special election came exactly a month after the district’s Democrats backed Crighton’s bid in the Feb. 6 special primary election. For the pair of special-elections, Crighton was the sole Democrat or Republican candidate - who returned nomination papers before a late December deadline to declare one’s candidacy for the Senate seat.

Michael Walsh, a Lynnfield resident, ran a blitz write-in campaign in last month’s primary. The lawyer hoped to garner the Republican spot on the March 6 ballot, but the 152 votes that he captured out of the needed 300 across the district failed to bring that endeavor into fruition.

“It’s been quiet. The turnout – it’s very, very low,” said Duplin, seated in her office around noon Tuesday, of the town’s voter turnout. “It’s one name. It’s one ballot. It’s not contested, so there’s all of that.”

The 2.8-voter turnout is .1 percent more than Swampscott’s lowest ever - at 2.7 percent, a record that, in fact, the Feb. 6 primary set, according to Duplin.

Crighton worked for his now Senate predecessor for a decade, eventually becoming McGee’s chief of staff. He earned a spot on the Lynn City Council, serving as Ward 5 councilor from 2010 to 2014 and an at-large councilor from 2014 to 2016. In 2015, Lynners and Nahant elected him as state representative for the Eleventh Essex District.

The Lynn native will now be able to run with all the trappings of incumbency in the fall election season for a full two-year term.

“We send our sincere congratulations to Brendan Crighton for tonight’s great win in the Third Essex district,” wrote Gus Bickford, chairman of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, in a statement Tuesday night. “During his career and this campaign, he’s proven that he truly understands the needs of the district and the issues most important to its residents.”

Since Crighton declared his candidacy in December, he said he met with as many voters as possible, knocking on doors and addressing political and community groups. To voters while on the stump, Crighton painted himself as a politician with fresh ideas, bold vision and strong leadership. They represent leadership qualities that the district needs, Crighton told voters on the stump, given what he described once as “all the controversies and the problems we’re having as a country right now.”

On the campaign trail, he pointed to, in part, education – particularly developing a workforce to meet the North Shore’s economic needs, making college more affordable and expanding access to early to education – Lynn’s waterfront revitalization, battling the opioid epidemic as well as Massachusetts transportation infrastructure among his top priorities.

“I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Senate, and my ten years over there will allow me to hit the ground running,” said Crighton. “While the campaign has ended, we look forward to continuing these conversations and working together to help our district reach its full potential.”

Massachusetts Governor’s Council and Gov. Charlie Baker, R-Swampscott, will swear in the Senator-elect “sometime over the next week,” said Crighton’s campaign.

Despite Swampscott’s lackluster turnout, running any election keeps the town clerk, her assistant, Connie Hayes, and poll workers busy, said Duplin. But on top of the day’s election, the clerk’s office served a revolving door of Swampscott residents who dropped off filled-out nomination papers to run for local office or Town Meeting representative seats in the town’s April election because March 6 was the deadline to do so.

For Swampscott in particular, Tuesday’s election also constituted the second in literally a handful of guaranteed elections in 2018: The Feb. 6 Special state primary, the March 6 special state election, the April 24 Swampscott election, the Sept. 4 state primary election and, finally, the Nov. 6 state election.

And that election lineup doesn’t include a special election that could transpire after Swampscott’s May Town Meeting.